This week, reading unnatural DNA, and young worm mothers explain a wriggly riddle. Your browser does not support the audio element. Plus, how young worm mothers may ...

Recombination, the exchange of DNA between maternal and paternal chromosomes during meiosis, is an essential feature of sexual reproduction in nearly all multicellular organisms. While the role of ...

As far back as the late 1800s, researchers realized that answers to some ecological questions could be obtained by examining the molecular composition of organisms. One of the earliest attempts at ...

While evolution involves changes in organisms that we can observe, they undergo evolution at a deeper level, too. That is, changes affect the "letters" (four different types of chemical units) in the ...

RNAi is a powerful tool to used to define cellular mechanisms, and analyze the gene functions of various organisms in laboratories worldwide. Credit: petarg/ Shutterstock.com Fragments of RNA ...

Concerns about biodiversity tend to focus on the loss of species from ecosystems, but a new study suggests that the loss of variation within species can also have important ecological consequences.

Microorganisms—bacteria, viruses and other tiny life forms—may drive biological variation in visible life as much, if not ...

Special proteins known as prions, which are perhaps best known as the agents of mad cow and other neurodegenerative diseases, can also serve as an important source of beneficial variation in nature, ...

• Background and Aims Variation in the composition of floral nectar reflects intrinsic plant characteristics as well as the action of extrinsic factors. Micro-organisms, particularly yeasts, represent ...

In nature, ecosystems are tightly linked through the flow of organisms, detritus, and nutrients across boundaries arbitrarily imagined by humans. These systems are deeply in tune with seasonal changes ...

The impact of ocean acidification on species in different parts of the world has been miscalculated, so far, and its impact in some cases over- and in other cases underestimated, an analysis of 86 ...